To compete with robots, workers need lots of help. The future of manual work is an exoskeleton suit that gives its wearer superhuman powers. And it’s coming faster than you might think.
Consultants have been pessimistic about the future of employment. The World Economic Forum recently estimated more than five million jobs will be lost worldwide as middle-income, white-collar workers are made redundant by advances in artificial-intelligence software. To make matters worse, blue-collar work has been in decline for decades, a victim of globalization and automation.
Taken together, finding work in an office complex will be no more likely than getting a good job in a factory. It will be a bloodbath. Software robots will silently invade the middle class, killing white-collar work, while the likes of Yaskawa Electric’s arc-welding industrial robots decimate the rest. Among the few job descriptions with promise are robot designer and robot repairman.
That’s what’s so promising about exoskeletons. They give humans a fighting chance. In a blog post, last week, Hyundai showed off the latest version of its hulking H-LEX platform, below. The Korean company has been working to bring exoskeletons to industrial settings for the past several years. The aim is to find a cost-effective way to reduce worker fatigue, increase safety and productivity.
With its shiny primary-color scheme and muscular ascetic, the H-LEX has been fittingly compared to the Ironman suit of Hollywood films. And the suit does give average workers superhuman powers. Advanced hydraulics let workers lift several hundred kilograms effortlessly.
Ekso Bionics is taking the modern exoskeleton in a different direction. The offspring of a project at the University of California and the U.S. Defense Department’s research arm DARPA, the Ekso Suit uses leverage to help wearers safely support heavy loads without bulky batteries or hydraulics. The lightweight carbon-fiber suit is perfect for workers who use heavy machinery like industrial grinders and chipping hammers for extended periods. That utility caught the eye of Lockheed Martin(LMT). Through its subsidiary FORTIS, it is licensing the technology.
In many cases, where tasks can’t be easily replicated by software, using assisted human labor is going to be preferable to full-blown robots. In others cases, solutions will involve some combination of robotics and humans. The goal is to increase productivity in a cost-effective way.
In BMW’s South Carolina plant, humans work alongside massive robots applying sealant inside door castings. In Amazon.com's New Jersey warehouse, electric robots quietly skim across the concrete floors to help human workers complete customer orders more efficiently. Several companies have even begun to replace robots with humans because people deal better with subtle changes that can’t be easily programmed. For example, Mercedes-Benz has humans working through customization checklists for its most expensive cars. If you chose heated or cooled cup holders in your S-Class Mercedes, they were installed by a human.
Given what we know about artificial intelligence and robotics it would be naïve to bet human workers are not facing massive dislocation. However, some manual laborers – whose work is not easily replicated by computer programming – are about to get superhuman powers in the form of lightweight exoskeletons or Ironman-type robotic suits. More power to them.
